Our perceptions and beliefs about ourselves, others, and the world around us stem from our inherent personalities, filtered through past and current influences: familial, generational, cultural, and social.

The perceptions and beliefs we hold can be based on truths, or they can be false and based on Unconscious Influences* we unknowingly hold. *(definition below).

The tendency to allow false perceptions to be created has its roots in Humanity’s past, which we perpetrated without knowing we were doing so.

All of our conscious and Unconscious Influences work together like threads in a patchwork quilt that link the interweaving patterns of how we deal with life—like a matrix that overlays our lives. I call this our Life Matrix.

Our Life Matrix: Is the lens through which we see and navigate the world. Fueled by our heart beliefs, which come from our conscious and Unconscious Influences, our Life Matrix holds all of our underlying perceptions and misperceptions. It supports what we think we need to be and what we think we need to do to be happy, fulfilled, empowered, and to have harmonious relationships. It upholds all of our perceptions—whether they are real or false.

Our Life Matrix can bring about positive or negative experiences for us. We usually develop a dominant Life Matrix, but since living is an organic ebb and flow of thoughts and emotions, we may vacillate between the positive and negative influences of both forces.

If something causes us to react out of character, our heart beliefs cause us to quickly revert to our normal attitudes.

Our Life Matrix will predispose us to deal with life, others, issues, and situations by denying, procrastinating, responding calmly, or by reacting aggressively or passively.

A Positive Life Matrix

Living under the influence of a positive Life Matrix, we may embody optimism, confidence, and hopefulness. We may feel lucky, be fearless, as well as be accepting of others since a positive outlook and our own self-confidence cause us to be non-judgmental.

We could sometimes succumb to arrogance, impatience, or single-mindedness as our personality dictates, but emotional reactions will generally be composed.

Most of our dealings with others will likely be propelled by responses instead of reactions. And as our general outlook is positive, we will quickly return to positive attitudes should we fall into negative ones.

A positive Life Matrix may temporarily shift to a negative one, but we are usually pulled back as our underlying inner belief system holds a positive approach to life.

The same holds true for a negative Life Matrix. We may have times of positivity, but we generally default to the negative. A negative Life Matrix can be shifted more permanently to the positive, albeit with a sincere and conscious effort.

A Negative Life Matrix

If we are living under the influence of a negative Life Matrix, we are often needy. We may tend to be pessimistic, hesitant, doubtful, and feel disadvantaged.

As these attitudes do not invite in desired results we are often frustrated. We blame others for our failures. We may act with aggression, timidity, or passive-aggressiveness, or, vacillate between these ways of dealing with our frustrations.

When we do evoke positive feelings they are usually undermined, as our negative heart beliefs eventually pull us back under their influence.

We may hold a volatile emotional component and will be overtly reactive—instead of being responsive to situations and taking them at face value and without making it all about us and our neediness and/or emotions.

Or, we may respond with seeming passivity, but are internalizing our angers or frustrations keeping our inner world in turmoil. This becomes a vicious cycle, as inner turmoil invites in more of the same.

Our emotional state is very important because it defines who we are now being, which influences what our future holds.

It has only been in the last century or so that psychologists have been able to connect the dots between our Unconscious Influences. and how we experience life.

We often feel that we do not experience enough love in our lives; however, our capacity to truly feel love and to love others is in direct relationship to what is held in our Life Matrix.

Working to create a positive Life Matrix creates self-love and brings love into our life.

To become the cause of our experiences and the creator of our realities—instead of at the effect of negative Unconscious Influences, we must be cognizant of the vibrations we are emitting.

The conscious and unconscious beliefs and life philosophies within our Life Matrix govern everything we think, say, and do and thereby what we invite into our life.

The lens through which we view others and the world around us is how the world will show up for us. We become what we think we are, and we create based on what is held in our Life Matrix.

*Our Unconscious Influences: Our thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, and ideas based on past emotional impressions that we unconsciously constructed or appropriated from others, or from past situations. These may have created true positive perceptions about ourselves, others, situations, or the world around us. Or, they may have created negative false misperceptions that have us see ourselves and others through false lenses of separation and division.

Living at peace within ourselves and in harmony with others is what will make us happy: it is what we all yearn for. However, as many of us do not have a strong connection to our True Self, inner-peace often eludes us.

We unconsciously sense this lack of connection within our being causing inner frustration. In attempts to address this inner frustration, we may adopt attitudes that create disharmony around us.

Although Humanity has evolved spiritually considerably since – say the middle ages, many of the unfair and disempowering attitudes are still anchored within society.

For most of us, any negative or disempowering attitude we hold only causes conflict within our own sphere. However, we still see much blatant greed, biases, prejudice, inequality, and all aspects of hatred expressed in the world every day.

We are often appalled at how some people are treated – simply because of their size, sex, status, race, the color of their skin; for the way they dress, their beliefs, or their sexual orientation.

Witnessing unjust attitudes towards others may cause us to examine ours and may even encourage us to change them. It may inspire us to work to help a branch of society who is unfairly treated or disenfranchised. However, not all greed, judgement, prejudice, hate, and other disempowering attitudes about or towards others are so obvious and above-board.

Most of us are usually not greedy, judgmental, prejudiced, or harbor hate towards others. However, many of us do hold some subtle nuances of these attitudes buried within us – and sometimes they sneak out in covert, or even in overt ways.

Our personal and generational histories often held and even promoted negative attitudes towards others or groups of people – either through blame, revenge, judgement, prejudice, greed, hate, and even cruelty. And even if it did not, our collective history has.

We may not be overtly greedy, judgmental, or prejudice, but we still hold some cellular memory within us from Humanity’s past history of divisive and disempowering attitudes towards others. These may come out in subtle ways through our unconscious influences, which act upon us without our consent.

Society has evolved from say 200 years ago, and more recently we have become more conscious of the need to improve our attitudes and actions toward individuals and the disenfranchised. However, the influence of our past history is insidious and its effects are hard to shake.

Greed, prejudices, and injustice towards others are often deceptively crouched in ideals, social and religious beliefs, and even in helping others. These may be outwardly visible, or they may sneak out from time to time in subtle ways.

Most of us believe we are fair and accepting of all people,

And most of us are – most of the time.

However, sometimes we think we are being fair and accepting towards others but are unaware of how subtle the attitudes that promote negativity or unfairness can be. And some of us have become trapped in mind-sets that hold, support, and perpetuate biases, prejudices, and injustices.

We may uphold ideals, beliefs, or principles from past influences, adopt new ones, or get inspired to promote causes we believe are important. Most of the time we are able to do this without affronting others because of what they believe or support.

However, sometimes without realizing it in discussing our beliefs or endorsing or promoting our causes subtle judgments sneak in. And some of us believe we are justified in calling out others and criticizing their beliefs to promote ours.

Critical and attacking modes are left-over attitudes from our past history that we must work to overcome – individually and as a collective. They perpetuate disharmony, as the vibrations they give off invite more conflict into our life and the world.

Most of us are now realizing the value of extending respect to others, no matter how much we disagree with them. On a practical level, we can resolve differences more effectively with respectful communication and/or mediation. On an esoteric level, the vibrations this gives off creates an atmosphere for more resolution to take place in the world.

Many of us who have learned, been inspired by, or who have adopted new approaches to mental, physical, or spiritual health are anxious to share these findings with others. And most people do so with great insight and humility.

However, sometimes in our desire to share or to be helpful our passion turns into pushiness, and the other feels judged and in the wrong. Conveying newfound knowledge can make us feel important, and this can affect how we communicate it.

Our past has not trained us on the subtleties of judgement, biases, and prejudices. To ensure we are coming across as we intend, we must be aware of how others are receiving our messages.

Without realizing it, underlying threads of me-better-than-you, us-better-than-them, or a holier than though attitude can weave its way into our communications with others.

No matter what is going on around us, to create more harmony in our life and to help bring about a fairer, more accepting, and harmonious world, we can ensure that our communications with and about others are open and compassionate, and accepting of them – no matter how and in what way they are different from us. This helps people feel accepted and validated.

The more a person feels validated and accepted the less he or she is inclined to aggressive or defensive tendencies. They create more harmony around them, which helps diffuse disharmony with people they come in contact with who are not inclined to be fair or respectful.

Each open, compassionate, and accepting response we make creates a snowball effect. To ensure we are communicating in a way that builds up others we must:

Choose Our Words Carefully. Ensure Our Tone Is Gentle.

And Our Body Language Is Open.

We Must Not Fall into the Trappings of Greed – Even if It Is All Around Us

For eons, greed has been the mainstay of those in and with power and has been perpetrated upon the masses. Kings and rulers lorded over their people to such an extent that individuals starved while they lived in luxury.

This caused people who may not have otherwise been greedy to hide, hoard, and steal – just to survive. They were suspicious of those in power – and for good reason. They got stuck in a mind-set of lack – of there not being enough to go around, and a mind-set of disempowerment set in – of not having control over their circumstances.

Although today, at least in most parts of the world, our leaders are not greedy to the point that people are dying on the streets, but they still make the rules – often to suit themselves.

The wealthy still hold power over people’s lives as they get to hire, fire, buy-out indiscriminately, and make back-room deals to support their projects with often no concern for others involved, or for the public.

We now know that corruption is rampant among government, business, and the wealthy. We too have reason to be suspicious. And we are angry.

This may cause us to think that the government cheats me, so why shouldn’t I cheat on my taxes? However, doing so only perpetuates the problem, as cheating is buying into the belief that the Universe cannot provide for us.

We have inherited the mind-sets of lack and disempowerment from our ancestors. And we have been witness to, or even had experience of, the greed of those with power making decisions that benefit themselves to the detriment of others.

It is understandable that this might cause us to want to be stingy, greedy, to hoard, or to be concerned only about ourselves and our families. We do have to be practical with our finances regarding our futures, however, being concerned with only our own welfare perpetuates this old belief of lack in the world.

To help bring about an egalitarian world where everyone has everything they need and the opportunity to reach their potentials, we have to believe it can be so.

And we have to act on that belief by ensuring we are not being selfish or greedy with our finances, our goods, and our time – even if others are.

Our belief in abundance and the hope it encompasses creates the vibration to invite abundance and good things into our life. It also helps to create the atmosphere for abundance to flourish around the world so that everyone can live in comfort and feel empowered.

This article is based on and an expansion of various concepts in my book, Your Journey to Peace, Bridging the Gap Between Religion, Spirituality, Psychology, and Science. The chapter titles are listed in the Book Synopsis found at: https://yourjourneytopeace.com/book-synopsis/

All Humanity’s issues arise from the false belief of our separateness from Source. (Introduction)

Humanity’s history has been based on conditional love. This has created conflicting messages within us, because we extol the virtues of love, but do not uphold them. (Chapter 1)

Somewhere deep within the crevices of our mind lies the cellular memories of the original feelings of living within a harmony-ruled paradigm, and so it remains a longing deep within us. (Chapter 1)

Feeling peace and being happy and empowered requires that we believe in our hearts that we deserve to feel peaceful, and be happy and empowered. (Chapter 3)

We have been detached from and unaware of the unconditional love that is at the core of our being. (Chapter 4)

Don’t wallow in what you have or haven’t done—don’t get stuck in the darkness! (Chapter 4)

It is usually our intellect that is running the show, and our right brain and its creative impulses is usually at its beck and call. (Chapter 4)

Couples are usually just smashing into each other trying to get their needs met. (Chapter 5)

We yearn for intimacy in our relationships, but the playing out of our unconscious influences drives wedges between us. (Chapter 5)

An understanding of past-lives and our past and current soul’s journey can explain why some children in a family may have an issue with say, addiction, while another does not. (Chapter 6)

All form we perceive is an illusion and is of a dualistic nature. Everything within this duality, including us, the Masters, the extra-terrestrials, the light-beings, the Archangels, Spirit, and even the Universe is an illusion. (Chapter 6)

The Universe is holographic. As we move beyond the limitations of the 3rd dimension Humanity has existed under we will be able to take advantage of all it entails. This will allow us to feel empowered, be able to reach our full potentials, and feel more connected to one another. (Chapter 7)

As we continue to uncover all about who the gods of old really were, we must be careful not to allow defensiveness about our beliefs to overshadow the true intentions of the Masters and the intrinsic value of the belief systems that blossomed in their wake. (Chapter 7)

Some of the changes Gaia is going through are simply part of her evolutionary process, but many are because of the abuse we have put upon her through greed, ignorance, and modernization. Both the physical and emotional abuses we have put upon our Planet has affected her, and she has had to shrug them off. (Chapter 9)

At one point in history Humanity lived in harmony with nature and lsustainably with the Planet’s natural elements. The further we fell into duality, lack, greed, and getting what we wanted and needed to survive became our motivation. This grew to such an extent thatwe now even manipulate nature to those ends. One of the Indigenous peoples’ main purposes was to maintain their connection to the Planet so that when we strayed, they would be able to show us the way back. We must heed their advice! (Chapter 9)

Keeping a vision of the highest ideal of our purpose at the forefront of our consciousness will help keep the pitfalls that monetary abundance and the power it brings with it at bay. (Chapter 9)

The Ascension of Gaia is a cosmic event of huge proportions! At levels beyond our awareness we chose to be here on earth at this time of the Shift and Gaia’s Ascension for this personal and cosmic journey. (Chapter 10)

We don’t have to understand or even believe all the talk about the Shift or Ascension; we just have to embody or embrace the qualities of love inherent in the higher dimensions. (Chapter 10)

Just as we have the power to become all that we can be, we also have the power to create a beautiful, clean, safe world where everybody thrives. However, it will take collective optimistic vibrations to bring the world we want into our sphere of possibilities and overrule the lack paradigm that remains firmly entrenched in our unconscious minds. (Chapter 11)

The availability of free energy is in the realm of possibilities. However, we must believe in this potential; this will help Gaia align herself to the higher dimension from which we can more easily bring it forth. (Chapter 11)

We all have to find the balance between working within the realities of our lives and our world and aiming to create new and better realities wherever possible. (Conclusion)

Every contact with another person is an opportunity to offer notions of unity and Oneness, or those of polarity and separation. (Conclusion)

https://yourjourneytopeace.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Image-article-water-lilies-pink-water-lake-46231.jpeg350525Rosemaryhttps://yourjourneytopeace.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Rosemary-logo.pngRosemary2017-05-11 19:42:482018-02-27 22:12:31Although We Yearn for Harmony, Greed, Judgement, Prejudice, and Hate are often Insidious and Hard to Override

Karma is the term used by most Eastern philosophies. The Law of Cause and Effect and the Law of Balance (that I have put forth in chapter 2) are simply different and more specific ways of explaining karma.

Many have confused God’s revenge with the karmic Laws of Balance and of Cause and Effect playing out in our lives.

Proponents who say that karma affects our lives suggest that we accrue either good or bad karma by our attitudes and behaviors and that an accumulation of good karma allows for more positive life experiences and that of bad karma will lead to more negative life experiences.

We create good karma through positive, loving, accepting, and life-affirming attitudes and behaviors towards others. In how we deal with our situations at hand. Anyway we connect to or expresse our Onesness.

We create bad karma through negative, harsh, judgmental, and disempowering attitudes and behaviors towards others and how we handle situations.

It is also believed that adding to our bank of good karma can help neutralize the effects of bad karma. And we can clear bad karma by embracing attitudes and actions that deal positively and lovingly with the world around us and our life circumstances.

When people give us a hard time or unpleasant things happen to us, we are often frustrated, angry, or resentful of our circumstances. We feel like a victim or blame God.

But there are many reasons bad things happen to us. We may be inviting these experiences in through what is held in our Life Matrix (definition below). We might be clearing a karmic debt, or simply be caught in the crossfire of bad situations of what others are doing.

We can change what we invite into our sphere as well as clear our karmic debts by how we address current situations and behave towards others and the world.

Whatever is happening in our lives and no matter why, we can clear bad karma or add to our bank of good karma by our attitudes and behaviors surrounding the situation. We need not know why a particular event happened, we just have to deal positively with what presents itself now.

From her Christian perspective, Joyce Meyer says that we “add to our bank of good things to come” by forgiving, being kind, or doing the right thing. This is simply another way of explaining good karma.

However, at some level, we are usually at the cause of our current experiences, and at the deepest level we are also at the cause of what our soul’s journey dictates. Karma is also played out within our many lives through reincarnation. (My article on Reincarnation explains this and our soul’s journey more fully. You can find it here).

If we accumulate bad karma within one lifetime, at some point these debts will have to be cleared. For example, if someone has or is mistreating us, this may have been a current or past-life karmic debt that we incurred. We may have mistreated that person badly in a past life.

If we accumulate good karma in any lifetime, it will be reflected in one of the next ones. If someone is very kind or helpful to us in this lifetime it may be repayment for kindnesses we afforded them, or others, in our past life.

The Laws of Cause and Effect and of Balance are also in effect throughout our soul’s whole journey. Challenges and mistreatments may also be forgiveness lessons we chose to learn this lifetime and the other person may be fulfilling their function in our soul’s life plan.

When we deal with negative situations peacefully, we pay off our karmic debts surrounding the related issues, our vibrational makeup shifts and the issues disappear from our Life Matrix. Otherwise they remain within our emotional make-up and affect our life.

For example, until we address our tendency toward, say neediness, issues that will bring our neediness to the surface will keep showing up in our life.

(Life Matrix: Is the lens through which we see and navigate the world. It holds all our underlying perceptions or misperceptions and all our unconscious influences. It supports what we think we need to be, as well as what we think we need to do to uphold our perceptions, whether real or false.

We have peace and happiness when we are connected to our True Self. Being connected to our True Self allows us to feel empowered and become our Best Self.

We all have differing personalities, strengths, and weaknesses that are expressed in how we navigate the various aspects of our life, and when connected to our True Self we live in harmony with others – we don’t allow these differences to create conflict.

Many of us became disconnected from our True Self because we developed unconscious influences that created misperceptions about who we truly are, and who others truly are.

These misperceptions are derived from being witness to or from experiences we had within our familial, cultural, or social backgrounds, causing conflict within our beings.

Being under the tutelage of these unconscious influences we react in ways that not only undermine us becoming our Best Self, but also affects our relationships with others. Life becomes more difficult than it could be.

Being disconnected from our True Self we do not feel empowered to create the life we want. We often believe how we behave and our ways of reacting to others or situations are attempts to gain authority over our lives, but sometimes they are feeble attempts to counteract feelings of disempowerment.

Most of us are somewhat disconnected to our True Self. We may feel lonely, depressed, left out, disadvanted, or disemp0wered in someway. So rather than cut each other down we must move towards supporting each other.

Unconscious influences show up in selfish, aggressive, passive, or limiting attitudes, and the behaviors these engender. (They also show up in other ways, such as with dysfunctions and addictions, but I am not addressing those here. I am focusing on every-day attitudes and their behaviors that we can more easily choose to change once we understand them). Below are some examples.

Ambition, Success, Power, Pride, and Greed―are all attitudes that we can fall prey to, but that can easily derail our lives if not kept in check.

Ambition, in and of itself, is not a bad quality. Pure aspirations from our souls’ yearning bring harmony into our beings and ultimately direct us toward fulfilling lives. However, ambition can blind us to realities and distance us from those we love.

Success often follows ambition and makes us feel fulfilled for our efforts. However, we must be wary of the allure of what comes with success and the power it brings with it.

Power brings with it authority, and that responsibility must be handled with honor and integrity―not wielded over others, otherwise we will create disharmony for others, and ultimately, our self.

Pride can prevent us from expanding into all that we can be, as it can cause us to become myopic in our views. It may also erect emotional boundaries that can distance us from others.

Greed sets up limiting vibrations about abundance as it carries an underlying belief in the lack.

All these attitudes can derail our successes or alienate us from others.

Aggressive Behaviors and Attitudes: Control, Manipulation, Criticism, Bullying, and Impatience―are protective devices whose intent is to make us feel powerful, but as they come from a position of weakness they further lower our sense of self-worth.

Control: The most pervasive form of Humanity’s protective devices, control gives us a false sense of power over our lives, as well as on those we attempt to wield it over. Most controllers are quite apt to use other techniques to maintain their sense of power.

Manipulation: A controller often resorts to underhanded, manipulative tactics to influence others or situations to get their own way, either through aggressive or passive-aggressive tactics.

Criticism: Most often recognized immediately as blatant disapproval usually accompanies it, criticism can also be masked as someone claiming to help us see or do something better and in their way.

Bullying: An aggressive approach used by those trying to satisfy their injured self-esteem, bullies attempt to scare or control their victims, often intentionally hurting them. They frequently use escalating tactics.

Impatience: A weakness that stems from a lack of knowing that all is well, the person is often irritated with everyone and everything, usually stemmed from growing up in an atmosphere of agitation, anxiety, intolerance, or criticism.

Passive Attitudes and Behaviors: Helplessness, Victim Mentalities, and Passive-Aggressiveness―come about because of low self-esteem and fear of failure. When we fall prey to using passive attitudes and behaviors to counteract our fears or others’ aggressive tendencies, we are recoiling from our inner power base and its ability to empower us.

Instead of using aggressive techniques to get what we want or lashing out to avoid hurt or pain, our personalities combined with our childhood experiences influence us to react passively to real or imagined onslaughts by turning our emotions inward.

Helplessness usually comes about because we have never been encouraged in life or have been criticized and belittled to such an extent that we have given up trying. Lacking self-confidence, one of the best remedies for helplessness is trying new things.

A few years ago I heard Dennis DeYoung from the band Styx say at one of his concerts that “the reason people like me are doing well and are successful is mostly because we failed and got back up and tried again and again, many, many times,” and that failures are often great classrooms of learning. We have to fight our urge to feel helpless when we fail. .1

Victim mentalities develop when we are ineffective at getting what we want and finding our own empowerment. Feeling frustrated, we may adopt responses whereby we resort to blaming our situations on others or the world.

Passive-aggressiveness occurs when we feel helpless, victimized, or simply lack the self-esteem to speak up for ourselves. To be heard or get what we want we resort to subtle, non-aggressive tactics such as sad or long faces, deep sighs, and silent treatments.

Behaviors that can be Aggressive and/or Passive: Self-Indulgence, Envy/Jealousy, and Defensiveness―are attempts to placate our neediness, which do nothing to increase our self-esteem and thereby keep us in a negative mind-set.

Self-indulgence is the placating of our neediness. This encourages us to feel sorry for ourselves. Wallowing in our own issues keeps us stuck in our problems, and we are blinded to the possibilities of our lives.

Envy and Jealousy keep us in a negative frame of mind because they focus on what we lack, as our minds are filled with what another has. We are then not focusing our attention on how to get what we want, and the vibration of discontent will not invite our desires into our sphere.

Defensiveness comes into play when we are invested in being right, want to make the other feel wrong, or feel the need to protect and uphold our position on the subject at hand.

Limiting Attitudes: Minimalist Tendencies and Small-Mindedness―develop because we feel we are not deserving enough, or believe there is not enough love or goods to go around.

Minimalist tendencies keep us in limitation. They develop because we believe there is not enough of whatever we feel we are lacking, whether love or goods, to go around. Focusing on only what we have at the moment and not entertaining the possibility of having more in the future cuts off our connection to better circumstances, both personally and financially.

Small-mindedness plays out as our focusing mainly on the limited or minute details of events or living instead of on the bigger picture. This holds us to a limited view of life, leaving no room for hope of a future with a wider range of possibilities.

When we operate within limiting attitudes, we develop tunnel vision. When we drop minimalist or small-minded tendencies, our beings can then open up to all the potential the Universe holds for us.

We are either aligned with our True Self, or we are misaligned. A Course in Miracles tells us we are either acting out of love, or out of fear.

All expressions of love make us feel good, encourage and uplift others, and create harmony in our lives.

All expressions of fear, such as anger, revenge, greed, cruelty, etc., may make us feel good in the moment, but act to distrance us from our True Self and ultimately do not serve us.

As our unconscious influences keep us disconnected from our True Self, to find peace within ourselves, empowerment in our lives, and harmony with others we have to override them so that we can rekindle that connection.

We have to break through the barriers of our unconscious influences and their misperceptions, and the attitudes, reactions, and behaviors they engender that keep us disconnected from the love within our True Self.

Self-examination helps us to unearth the causes of any aggressive, passive, and limiting attitudes and behaviors that keep us from being our Best Self and free from conflict with those around us.

However, when looking at our past or current errors in perception of who we truly are and who others are, we must always be on guard against self-condemnation. We must remember: